


women are complicated creatures

by bookbug99



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Pining, Post-Series, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 20:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12515964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookbug99/pseuds/bookbug99
Summary: Abigail's unsent letters. (Post-series.)





	women are complicated creatures

Dear Billy,

First my tutor would be very angry that I have not used your Christian name. However every man I have spoken to has referred to you as Billy and so as such I will write the derivative name. Second I do not know if you remember me.

My name is Abigail Ashe. My mother died when I was a baby of influenza and my father -- well, my father was one of the ranking members and co-founder of the Charlestown colony before he was murdered in cold blood. That makes me an orphan, which is a rather curious word.

I know that we have only met once and it was during a very tumultuous time in both of our lives. Lady Hamilton told me once when we were on that voyage, “You are a very curious girl, Abigail.” You are a very curious man, too, Billy.

I am aware that teenage fantasies exist and that crushes on older men are expected. One of my friends, Dorothea, crushed on her pastor for a year until the spirit of Jesus Christ himself freed her from unwanted sin. My tutor Anne had a long-standing crush on the piano instructor, Mr. Frederickson, despite the fact that he was married and had three perky blonde children. 

But sometimes I think about you, Billy. Not in an unsacred way, but in a way where I wonder how you are doing, off on pirate adventures. I am jealous of the freedom you possess and the certainty in which you possess that freedom.

I used to write a journal. I wrote down everything that happened to me in extreme detail: the way the floor of the fortress cell felt, the way that the wind whips through your heart on the open sea, the way it feels to read sheet music and feel the notes come alive. I don’t write a journal anymore. It is too dangerous. But writing letters -- ones I know will always remain unsent -- gives me a sense of freedom that has been taken from me.

I hope everything is well in Nassau. I hope you are safe.

All my best,  
Abigail Ashe

Dear Billy,  
I never really knew my father, let alone understood him. Now that he’s dead everyone expects me to be grieving, wearing mourning clothes, and shuddering with tears. But my father was always a distant figure my entire life.

The memories I have of a child of the two of us are him trying to teach me to play piano. I failed each time and he always laughed. Another time we took a walk in Hyde Park, at the beginning of spring, and walked among the lilac trees.

But I was raised by my mother, first, and then later by my tutor Anne, who taught me Latin and the structure of sentences and how to diagram mathematical equations. Anne is the one who saw me every day, who would punish me when I failed to complete my assignments, the one who would organize birthday celebrations.

My father -- he was always a distant figure in my life. The Great Peter Ashe, who was beloved by all and hated by many. I knew my father as a heroic figure, someone who had built a colony out of nothing, a man who was always gone and rarely visited. When my father visited he stayed for only days at a time before leaving again on yet another business expedition. He was never really a father, but instead a man that I reviled, loved, and feared in equal measure.

I am angry at him. I know that God does not want us to hate, let alone hate the souls of dead men. But I am angry at him, for so many reasons. I am angry because he betrayed his own principles and hurt people due to his selfish actions. I am angry because he killed an innocent woman.

I miss him anyway. But I also hate him, and am glad he’s gone. My emotions are like a swirling whirlpool, mixed together into hatred and love. 

I wonder if in heaven, my father is angry at me for hating him. I wonder how things would have changed if he’d raised me. I wonder if my mother would have made the same decisions. I wonder how many men died in the burning of Charlestown.

There are many questions I will never be able to answer, Billy. That’s what makes them questions to ponder. Questions of morality, as my father would say.

Please stay safe.

Confused and conflicted but with a warm and open heart,  
Abigail Ashe

Dear Billy,

I spent the first twelve years of my life living in London. I do not know if you have ever been to London. It is far different than Charlestown, or the sea: it is a city built on the bones of its past, a city where smoke rises from every chimney, and a city where people have spent the last hundreds of years trying to build themselves a better future. I do not miss London, but soon I must return. Charlestown is in ruins and it is not an acceptable place for a society girl, even though she is an orphan and penniless and has nothing to return to.

Today, Billy, I am thinking about Lady Hamilton. If Lady Hamilton were here, she would tell me to call her Miranda, but I was raised with the kind of ideological thinking that believes nothing is more socially important than a man’s hereditary peerage.

I knew Miranda when I was a small child. Her husband would host dinner parties, and Thomas Hamilton (who was so witty and never deserved to die) loved having young children at his parties. So I would be invited, and sit and listen as my father and his peers discussed finances and horseracing and the gentry.

Miranda would let me come into the kitchen and watch as she helped the cooks prepare the meal: lavish turkeys and roasted potatoes and if there were enough supplies, chocolate cake topped with strawberries. I would roll out the dough and stir and everyone would laugh. After dinner, the men would smoke cigars and the women would drink wine and I would entertain myself by playing with toys on the Oriental carpet. Miranda would play with me, and laugh. She used to laugh more often.

Then I met Miranda again, by which point I was sixteen (of marrying age, which now is a deep irony) and she had changed. I know the people of Nassau did not know Miranda before, but before she was a smart woman with a biting wit who could entertain every guest in civilized London. Now she was quieter and angrier and still just as witty as her husband ever was, and much more reserved. She didn’t laugh anymore. Instead she raged.

Billy, I keep thinking about what it must have felt like when Miranda died. When that bullet pierced her head and her body collapsed. I am not a doctor, but I have read medical textbooks, and that sensation of falling -- the way it must feel as your heart stops beating and your body finally says goodbye -- is both beautiful and heart wrenching. But Miranda’s death was a tragedy that never deserved to happen and one that I cannot forgive my father for.

I have decided to remember Miranda, before, sparkling in the ballroom, and not the Miranda who the world destroyed. I want to honor her, and follow her memory, and change my life towards a different path than the one Lady Hamilton lived.

How is Flint? Is he still angry, or has he softened?

Curiously,  
Abigail Ashe

Dear Billy,  
I am smarter than half of these men combined and yet as a woman, I am forced to sit through their insufferable conversations and dim-witted marriage proposals. Women are told to stay quiet and still and stop talking, and focus on men's opinions and men's lives and men's stories. We are not allowed to tell our own stories, for fear that our corsets will become untied.

I am lucky, in so many ways; my father is wealthy and despite the collapse of his empire, he left behind enough money for me to flee to London. Anne is here, my tutor, and she escorts me to each ball. It is all very tedious, and all of the women here are so single-minded, and so different than the women on Nassau.

I know that I will not make a strong match. My father has lost any credibility he had with England, and even the tragedy of his death does not soften the blow of his failure. An earl will not want to marry an orphan, and despite the messages that everyone has told me, I do not want to marry an earl.

There are women who choose not to marry. There are women, women who live on Nassau, who have built different lives. Why do we have to make one choice that then defines us for the rest of our lives? Women are complicated creatures, and we are always growing and changing. I watch the Thames and think about the sacrifices my mother made, the sacrifices Miranda made, and I do not want their sacrifices to be in vain.

But I do not wish to marry a man who will never accept my true self. Instead, we talk about them: their families and hopes and dreams, their fears. I am being stifled into a box from which I fear I can never escape.

Billy, do you ever think of me? I think of you often, with a smile.

All my love,  
Abigail Ashe

Dear Billy,

I have imagined a thousand different futures. I daydream about where you must be during society dinners and boring meetings with my tutor and conversations with debutantes.   
Maybe you’re living on Nassau, ruling the pirate kingdom. You used to say that was your biggest dream, to be like Flint one day. I believe you would be an incredible leader.

Maybe you’re run away to Boston. There is supposed to be a beautiful river there, and it is a thriving city despite British occupation. Maybe you ride a boat down the Charles and think of the girl you met once on a maiden voyage. What was her name? Anna, Annemarie, Annie, Annelise --

Maybe you’ve escaped to the secret pirate kingdom that sailors tell stories about, Libertalia. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, a land like Nassau where pirates thrive outside of society’s boundaries. There, the Arab call for prayer announces each morning.

Maybe you’ve escaped to the Continent, ended up living by the sea in Portugal, or a mountainous village in the Alps, or now reside in Paris. Maybe if you live on the Continent we could see each other one day.

Maybe you’ve gone into hiding, changed your name and identity. Maybe you don’t go by Billy anymore, and instead are called William or Joseph or George or Bones. Every pirate needs an alias of course. Maybe I will never able to find you again, because you have left behind everything you’ve ever known, said farewell to Billy.

Or maybe you’re still a pirate, still somewhere on the open sea. Fighting tides and currents and the changing nature of the ocean, always unpredictable and always dangerous. Killing men who dare to hurt you, raising your flag in the name of the pirate empire, standing steadfast against the forces who wish to destroy piracy.

Maybe we will never see each other again. We were a scared little girl headed directly into an uncertain future and a man who knows no other life than the open sea. We were meant to meet but not stay together, because we are not always put in each other’s lives for a happy ending.

I miss you. I hope you are healthy and happy and safe. I hope you keep on fighting. Billy, I hope you remember me, and some days I dream that you think about me. Abigail Ashe, the bravest girl in the western hemisphere, you say.

We remember one another like ships passing in the night: unknown, unseen, and forgotten.

With great love and admiration,  
Abigail Ashe


End file.
